Cyber Monday sales rise 5% to $887 million

With Amazon leading the charge, the big e-commerce shopping day matches the all-time record

According to the latest numbers from Internet marketing researcher comScore, online spending on Black Friday and Cyber Monday grew 11% and 5% year-over-year, respectively, with Cyber Monday registering $887 million in spending. Matching the all-time record sales day, which landed on December 9th last year, this year's Cyber Monday fulfilled predictions by clearly beating out last week's Black Friday online sales, which amounted to a total of $595 million.

At the same time, while the number of online shoppers increased to 8.7 million (a 6% year-over-year change), comScore marked a 1% decrease in average buyer spending (dropping from $104 to $102).

As for the rest of November, comScore noted that e-commerce sales grew 3% year-over-year, a hearty improvement when compared with the 2% year-over-year decline in spending for Q3.

The number one most visited site on Cyber Monday was, unsurprisingly, Amazon, which was responsible for 16% of all of the day's traffic (last year Amazon captured 11% of the day's traffic). Walmart.com, Target.com, Bestbuy.com, and JCPenny.com made it into the top five after Amazon, with 10%, 5%, 4%, and 3% shares of the market, respectively.

Another market analyzer, Coremetrtics, found that this year's Cyber Monday sales beat out last year's by 14%, a much larger change than the one noted by comScore. Either way, it is abundantly clear that Cyber Monday has earned its place alongside Black Friday as a monumental sales day for online retailers, and it is only gaining more significance.

The heaviest spending, of course, is yet to come, with sales expected to peak in mid-December. Does anybody think that the next two weeks will see the rise of a new record online sales day?